This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Afghanistan vets ‘not violent … they’re killing themselves’

The suicide of Afghan veteran leaves family in shock and questions about the state of mental health services available for the troops.

Peter Anderson displays a photo of his older son Ron in his home in Lincoln, N.B. Ron served with the Royal Canadian Regiment in Afghanistan. He returned home suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and took his own life last February. (Mike Dembeck / FOR THE TORONTO STAR)

Lt. Loic Baumans, of the Royal 22e Regiment, takes a rest during a combat operation in Kandahar in 2011.
(MURRAY BREWSTER / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

OTTAWA—“The army can train them to go to war. But they can’t train them to come home.”

Peter Anderson knows first-hand the tragic fallout of Canada’s war in Afghanistan. His two sons served in H Company, 2nd battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment on the same tour in 2007.

Both came home casualties of war, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

Younger son Ryan, 34, is in treatment for his stress injuries.

On Feb. 24, his older son Ron, 39, killed himself.

Article Continued Below

“It was an awful shock to us,” the father said in a telephone interview from his home in Lincoln, N.B. “He gave us no hint. None.”

Ron Anderson left behind two boys, ages 14 and 13 and twin girls, age 10, and questions about the state of mental health services available for the troops.

Ron Anderson’s suicide was not an isolated incident. Between November and March, five regular-force soldiers and four reservists took their lives.

Those deaths included Master Cpl. William Elliott, 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, who had four tours abroad, including two in Afghanistan; Warrant Officer Michael McNeil, who had done multiple tours abroad, including Afghanistan, and was a decorated combat veteran; and Cpl. Leona MacEachern, who had retired from the forces.

MacEachern’s death when her car crashed head-on into a transport truck west of Calgary on Christmas Day initially appeared to be an accident. However, her husband Tom later said later it was an “intentional final desperate act.”

“We would like to say that Leona had slipped through the cracks in the system but in fact, there does not seem to be ‘a system’,” he said in a statement after her death.

‘Problem on their hands’

Because he had just retired from the armed forces, Ron Anderson’s death won’t be counted in official statistics. Veterans Affairs does not compile statistics on suicides or suicide attempts. But his father has no doubt it was related to his time in uniform.

“The thing with this PTSD bit, they’ve got a big problem on their hands here,” Peter Anderson told the Star.

Ron, who held the rank of sergeant, was a veteran of seven tours in places like Kosovo, Croatia and twice in Afghanistan. “Always in the infantry. Always up front,” his dad said.

Each tour took a toll on his mental fitness. But it was the last rotation in Afghanistan in 2007 that proved his undoing.

“When you get up every morning under fire and on and on it goes like that, it’s bound to get to some,” Peter said.

“He wouldn’t tell us much. He wouldn’t get into that. He wouldn’t get into the war, neither, who he killed and stuff.”

The worst day came on April 8, 2007, when a LAV III armoured vehicle hit a roadside bomb, killing the six soldiers inside. Ron was following in the vehicle behind.

His sons returned to Canada from Afghanistan changed men. Peter saw the symptoms up close. Drinking. Gambling. An indifference to the world. Ron would sometimes retreat to the woods, just to be alone.

Peter Anderson is himself a 30-year veteran of the armed forces, retiring at the rank of sergeant-major. He says the current spate of suicides is not normal. He’s at a loss on how to help. But he questions whether the armed forces are ready to cope with the fallout from the Afghan mission.

“Their solution . . . is send them home. So they go home. They sit alone, whether it be their garage or their basement, wherever, and drink all day.”

The military says the number of suicides among military members has been relatively stable in recent years. In 2013, nine members of Canada’s military took their own life; an additional four deaths have not been confirmed yet as suicides. There were 10 in 2012, 21 in 2011, 12 in 2010 and 11 in 2009. The military also says that the suicide rate is not significantly different from the general population.

The military’s health branch reviews each suicide and so far, has found no pattern that links the deaths to their service, said Dr. Paul Sedge, a psychiatrist with 30 years in uniform.

“People kill themselves in the (Canadian Forces) for the same reasons they do in the civilian world,” Sedge said in an interview “They usually have a mental illness and then usually there is a psycho-social stressor that precipitated it. Most commonly, like 50 per cent of the time, it’s a relationship.”

A review of suicides in 2011 and 2012 by the health branch found that a history of mental illness was present in almost half of the suicides with major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder topping the list.

The suicide review found that a relationship failure or conflict was a factor in almost half of the suicides. Other stresses include career-related issues (21 per cent); financial troubles (15 per cent); and chronic physical health problems (13 per cent).

Almost two-thirds had deployed at least once and 36 per cent had deployed on two or more missions. Half of those who had taken their life had deployed in support of the Afghanistan mission.

The predominant mental illness in the Canadian Forces is depression, which is higher than in the general population, especially among males in the regular force, who had double the rate, Brig.-Gen. Jean-Robert Bernier, the military’s surgeon-general, told a parliamentary committee last month. .

“We have to increase getting people into care and we have to increase the quality and the effectiveness of the treatments.”

What happens to troubled troops after they leave the military is a question mark. As in Ron Anderson’s case, suicides by those who have left the military are not routinely counted, even though their deaths could be attributed to their service.

However, suicides among former military members were examined in a study by Statistics Canada, the Defence Department and Veterans Affairs. Its findings, released in May 2011, found that among males, the risk of suicide was about one and a half times higher than the general male population. “This difference was statistically significant,” the study said.

It also found that non-commissioned members were more likely to kill themselves than officers. So too were members with less than 10 years of service. The suicide rate was higher for individuals who had been medically released or forced out of the ranks compared with those who left voluntarily.

Leona’s struggle

Though she never saw combat, Leona MacEachern had served as a military police officer and had been treated for stress and fatigue. In the 16 months before her death, her husband Tom MacEachern says the family struggled with Veterans Affairs to get her help.

“So is this a department with a culture of compassion or efficiency?” he told a parliamentary committee last month.

“We can’t deal with people, especially wounded people, using the same processes we use to procure office supplies,” he said.

“Veterans need immediate access to properly trained medical or social workers . . . who in a crisis can help make the connections required between the veterans and who can help.”

In the wake of his wife’s death, MacEachern said, the family heard from others who were suffering and worries that PTSD has reached “epidemic proportions” within the military.

“As much as some would like to put Afghanistan behind us . . . I hope I’m wrong, but based on recent past experience with other soldiers in crisis, we could be in for a rude awakening.”

In February, the military had 104 active boards of inquiry examining “significant” events such as the deaths of Canadian Forces members. That included 75 investigations into suicides and attempted suicides.

Senior commanders launched a so-called “tiger team” to tackle the backlog and by mid-April, outstanding inquiries into suicides and attempted suicides tallied 45, including five new inquiries launched this year.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com